HP Launches IT Performance Suite

With the introduction of its IT Performance Suite, HP makes good on its pledge to focus on delivering software to help IT staff build, manage and deploy enterprise software better.

Keeping its
promise to continually increase its focus on software, HP has introduced a new
suite of software to measure and improve IT performance for enterprise
customers.
"We are
repositioning our entire portfolio into the HP Performance Suite. We're in a
position to cover, end to end, the operational and analytical needs of
enterprise IT executives," Marge Breya, general manager for software at HP,
told eWEEK.

"This
announcement clearly indicates HP's understanding of the role software plays in
every enterprise, said Theresa Lanowitz, founder of the Voke
industry analysis firm. "Executives at the highest level of an organization
know that the software used to run the company is inextricably linked to the
brand. Having visibility across the organization, a more proactive management
of IT is enabled."

Lanowitz also
noted that she believes HP's announcement of the HP IT Performance Suite
signals a shift in HP's overall view of the market. "HP's view is shifting from
one of products and solutions for a specific group or role within IT to one of
a holistic and comprehensive view of the business of IT," she said.
HP officials
said IT executives need standardized, efficient tools that measure, benchmark
and improve performance. Having a comprehensive view of this performance enables
CIOs to deliver what HP calls "an Instant-On Enterprise" that embeds technology in
everything it does to serve customers, employees, partners and citizens with
everything they need, instantly, the company said.
However, most KPIs
(key performance indicators) for IT are collected across disparate systems
using different methods. This creates management complexities that can slow
responses to shifting priorities and changing market conditions.

"We're going
after the silos that exist and negatively impact IT performance management,"
Breya said.
To do this, HP
is implementing a series of scorecards and a series of products tailored to the
major professions in IT, Breya said. "The first one is tailored toward the CIO,
and we've identified 170 KPIs. However, the first release will have about 50
KPIs," she said.
The HP IT Performance Suite includes the new HP IT
Executive Scorecard and helps IT perform better by providing CIOs insight from
across a broad range of solutions to manage and optimize application
development, infrastructure and operations management, security, information
management, and financial planning and administration.
Each product
in the HP Software portfolio improves the performance of
the discrete IT functions addressed, while the IT Executive Scorecard helps
technology executives optimize overall IT investments and outcomes, HP
officials said.
The HP IT
Executive Scorecard provides visibility into critical performance indicators at
cascading levels of IT leadership. Its foundation is the open IT Data Model
with built-in capabilities to integrate data from multiple sources, including
third-party products, to deliver a single view of IT metrics. Using the
scorecard, IT leaders can rapidly measure, benchmark and address performance
issues.
"Every CIO
needs to do two things: constantly shift resources to support changing
enterprise priorities and clearly demonstrate return on IT investment," said Bill Veghte, executive vice president of software
at HP, in a statement. "The HP IT Performance Suite is the first software
offering that does both, by putting the power of agility into the hands-and
budgets-of IT leaders with real-time insight and optimization of IT
investments."
Moreover, the
IT Performance Suite uses HP's lifecycle approach to software development and
management, and integrates industry standards such as the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure
Library), HP said. In addition, HP research has identified 150 standard,
best-in-class KPIs, more than 50 of which are included in the upcoming release
of the HP IT Executive Scorecard, the company said.
And with HP's
cascading scorecard approach, KPIs are distributed in dashboards that provide
real-time, role-based performance insights to technology leadership, allowing
alignment across common goals for an entire IT organization.
The upcoming
CIO Edition Standard release of the technology includes the Executive Scorecard
along with Financial
Planning and Analysis, Project and Portfolio Management and Asset Manager modules. This edition automatically
integrates data from the modules to provide more than 20 best-practice KPIs
covering financial and project health, enabling the optimization of IT
performance from a business investment point of view, Breya said.
"Leveraging
emerging technologies to drive new business models is becoming my primary
focus," Alexander Pasik, CIO of the world's largest technical professional
association, IEEE, said in a statement. "The traditional operational aspects of
IT must be streamlined and instrumented, and thus measurable, so as to enable
this increasingly necessary function. With IEEE's planned implementation of the
HP IT Performance Suite, I expect to have, for the first time, one complete
view of IT's performance using the indicators that matter most to our
business."
"This
announcement of the HP IT Performance Suite CIO Edition Standards is a
persona-oriented solution," Lanowitz said. "This is a clear indicator that we
should expect more of these types of persona-oriented solutions from HP for
critical executive roles. The business of IT must be managed effectively to
deliver valuable business outcomes. Giving executives the knowledge to make
strategic decisions is the next advancement in a lifecycle approach to IT and
the business-critical software it delivers."
Meanwhile, as
a first step, HP's online CIO and Cloud
Assessment tools help clients quickly evaluate their current level
of IT Performance Management maturity, HP officials said. HP Strategic
Advisory Services are designed to help clients define KPIs based on
enterprise priorities and deliver actionable roadmaps to ensure maximum value
from the HP IT Performance Suite. HP Solution Consulting Services uses a deep
expertise in HP Software products to help clients reduce costs and ease the
implementation of the HP IT Performance Suite.
Breya said
many of the solutions that make up the IT Performance Suite are available as a
service, based on HP's decades-long experience in helping IT professionals
rapidly adapt to change, deploy in-house resources more effectively and assure
business outcomes for the enterprise.
HP will
demonstrate its new IT Performance Suite at the company's premier user and
developer event, HP DISCOVER, which runs June 6-10 in Las Vegas.
The European version will take place Nov. 29-Dec. 1 in Vienna.
HP pledged to
begin making software a major play for the company at
its HP Software Universe conference in Barcelona in November 2010. In
Barcelona, HP announced HP Application Lifecycle Management 11, a new
unified system to manage the application lifecycle, as
well as new tools for testing software along with new ALM services, among other
things.
Meantime, for
its part, HP said people who register now for the new online community Discover
Performance at www.hp.com/go/discoverperformance/reg will
receive the inaugural edition of Inflexion, a bimonthly online publication that
delivers actionable insight from peers, thought leaders and analysts. Community
members receive access to exclusive content and analysis with a focus on
initiatives that turn IT performance into business success, HP said. Members
also will be invited to exclusive webinars and local events.

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.